I look at your frame of Morgan and my # 1 frame of Marketa and they seem to be very similar in terms of the light and the fuzziness of the shadows. What differences do you see that I'm missing in regard to the "hardnness" of the light?

I look at your frame of Morgan and my # 1 frame of Marketa and they seem to be very similar in terms of the light and the fuzziness of the shadows. What differences do you see that I'm missing in regard to the "hardnness" of the light?

The modifier used and the angle of incidence to the lens are the predominant difference. Yours uses a soft box mine a bare beauty dish. The initial quality of the light produced by these two tools is significant.

The similarity of shadows you see is more a product of distance then the way in which the light was delivered.

Any single light source close to a background is going to produce a reasonably hard edged shadow line as you can see under the chins of both models. Were Morgan as close to the background as the model in your shot you would see the difference very clearly as Morgans shadows would be very hard edged. However we all know that one way to soften shadows is pull the subject away from the background. In Morgans case she is nearly 12' from the background and I was shooting up thus displacing the shadow behind her so that it does not start directly under her as in your shot. The result is the background shadow is diffused by distance and further diffused by the distortion of the curve of the cyc wall floor. Had she been against a wall as in this shot which was lit the same way

you would find the resulting shadow much harder. Again though there is more to hard light then just the simple shadow it produces. The true qualities of the light come into play as well. Detail is captured much sharper with a harder light. The detail edges tend to remain utterly crisp. Contrast is higher and color can render much more dramatically with properly controlled hard light. Sometimes web res compression really masks the true qualities of a photo particularly in a full body frame where fine detail is harder to see. The very smashing of pixels required to achieve web file sizes is of course destructive to the pixel and thus to resolution so seeing the true nature of the relationship between hard light and detail is harder to see.

As far as physically comparing shadows between the two photos a closer comparison would be to compare the shadows under the chins. In that case you will see the density of the shadow under Morgans chin is much deep and harder or plugged meaning they obscure more detail then the shadow under Marketa's chin.

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"The only photographer we ought compare ourselves to is the one we used to be"

This was the last image taken as I was tearing down my studio. This young lady was sitting on the floor as I was taking down my lights. I handed my assistant one of my strobes and told her to hold it up and to the right, about 3' from the models face, and I just took this last shot. In my opinion, it turned out to be the best shot of the day, as I don't normally shoot dramatic looking images.